Film Talk: Latest Movie Releases – 'Damaffleck' are hoping new Nike flick is a shoe-in

Make no mistake folks, you can forget Leigh and Olivier, Burton and Taylor, Ford and Flockhart, and even Brad and Ange. None of them, ever, will be Affleck and Damon.

Life-long best buds whose names will always be synonymous, the dynamic acting/writing/producing duo of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have been one of tinseltown’s most prolific (and, to be clear, platonic) power partnerships for nigh on thirty years. The first effort I saw them appear in together was not, as for most people, Good Will Hunting, but in fact 1999’s Dogma – a Kevin Smith flick that caused something of an upset among the Catholic faith. In it, ‘Damaffleck’ star as a pair of angels exiled from heaven and looking to make their rockstar return to paradise. As with most Kevin Smith flicks, it was an acquired taste, but one I acquired pretty quickly thanks to the chemistry between its leading pair. Naturally, GWH was quickly on the list, and thanks to the strength of our boys as a writing team, it remains one of my favourite flicks of all time.

A recent reminder of the Affleck-Damon magic came in 2021, with medieval historical action drama The Last Duel. Yet now the boys are looking to win our hearts with a far more modern tale – but not one without the weight of history behind it.

Directed by Affleck, and with himself and Damon in starring roles, Air tells the tale of how back in the mid-80s, a certain near-bankrupt training shoe company risked it all to bet on a nobody. Substitute in the names Nike and Michael Jordan, and, yes lads, we’ve got chills.

But do the boys pull off yet another alley-oop, or could this one have done with an assist? It’s time to take a look...

AIR (15, 112 mins)

Released: April 5 (UK & Ireland)

In writer-director Cameron Crowe’s 1996 feelgood comedy Jerry Maguire, Cuba Gooding Jr’s wide receiver Rod Tidwell encourages his beleaguered agent (Tom Cruise) to secure him a better contract deal by chanting, “Show me the money!”

His plea to reward fairly an athlete’s sporting excellence in an industry that aggressively markets and merchandises its biggest names until their star has dimmed reverberates throughout Air.

Set more than a decade before Jerry Maguire, director Ben Affleck’s nostalgic drama recreates the behind-the-scenes negotiations of the ground-breaking 1984 partnership between rookie player Michael Jordan and Nike’s basketball division.

The landmark agreement gave birth to the first Air Jordan but also granted an athlete a percentage of profits from every shoe sold for the first time.

“A shoe is just a shoe… until my son steps in it,” Jordan’s formidable mother Deloris (Viola Davis) reminds Nike, coining her elegant alternative to the Tidwell mantra.

Scripted by Alex Convery, Air inhales the stale machismo, sweat and desperation of Nike executives – underdogs at the time with a 17% market share of basketball sneaker sales behind Adidas and Converse – as they seek to change perceptions of their brand and disprove Jordan’s bullish agent David Falk (Chris Messina) when he jibes that world class players don’t wear third place shoes.

Leading the charge is Nike’s basketball talent scout Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), who believes the company should invest its entire annual 250,000 US dollar budget in one prospect: 21-year-old NBA rookie Michael Jordan.

His high-risk strategy is initially rejected by eccentric CEO Phil Knight (Affleck) and vice president of marketing Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), who believe they should hedge bets on three or four players.

Howard White (Chris Tucker), VP of basketball athlete relations, succinctly sums up the problem facing the company: “Nike is a jogging company. Black people don’t jog.”

Unperturbed, Vaccaro flouts protocols which require companies to negotiate with a player’s agent and he travels to North Carolina to speak directly to Michael’s parents Deloris (Davis) and James (Julius Tennon).

“I am willing to bet my career on Michael Jordan,” explains Vaccaro when he returns to Nike headquarters in Portland to justify his actions.

To win big, he requires a spark of genius from creative director Peter Moore (Matthew Maher) to design a sneaker prototype worthy of the player’s endorsement.

Bookended by archive footage and photographs, Air confidently dribbles through a condensed timeline, anchored by Damon’s winning performance.

Affleck’s unfussy direction allows Convery’s snappy dialogue and sparkling chemistry between the starry ensemble cast to propel his film within shooting distance of the hoop before he slam dunks a climactic, heart-on-sleeve boardroom speech.

At the end of the 1984 season, Jordan was named NBA Rookie of the Year. Affleck’s engrossing and crowd-pleasing picture soars in his shoes.

THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE (PG, 92 mins)

Released: April 7 (UK & Ireland)

For more than 40 years, moustachioed Italian plumber Mario has been the enduring symbol of the Nintendo video game company.

He has clambered up scaffolding and ladders to defeat Donkey Kong, rescued Princess Toadstool from Bowser in Super Mario Bros., intentionally caused high-speed collisions with discarded banana skins in Mario Kart and somersaulted through colourful environments on the N64, Wii and Switch consoles.

With his acrobatic abilities, daredevil attitude and comical costume changes into a yellow cat, bumblebee, raccoon and flying squirrel, Mario is perfectly suited to the big screen but one previous effort in 1993 to translate his hijinks was an unmitigated disaster (a live-action Super Mario Bros. starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo).

Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic sensibly choose computer-animation as their medium to gallop through a colour-saturated origin story, which includes a training montage set to Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out For A Hero” that gleefully explains mystery blocks and power ups.

Screenwriter Matthew Fogel demonstrates unbridled affection for Mario’s legacy, engineering set pieces around different iterations of the games such as styling the brothers’ journey to their first plumbing job as a side scrolling 2D platform level then upgrading to eye-popping 3D for a turbo-charged kart race along Rainbow Road and a fiery final showdown.

Brooklyn-based brothers Mario (voiced by Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) quit their day jobs with demolition company the Wrecking Crew to kickstart a family plumbing business.

It’s a baptism of fire for the siblings and their old foreman (Sebastian Maniscalco) mocks the decision to go solo: “You’re a joke and you always will be.”

To disprove the naysayers, Mario and Luigi venture into Manhattan’s sewers to repair a burst water main and they are sucked into a mysterious green pipe.

Luigi is propelled into the Dark Lands and falls into the clutches of fire-breathing turtle Bowser (Jack Black) and his Koopa army, spearheaded by sorcerer Kamek (Kevin Michael Richardson).

Meanwhile, Mario emerges in the Mushroom Kingdom, where Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) rules benevolently over loyal subjects including Toad (Keegan-Michael Key).

Peach hopes to repel Bowser’s imminent attack by forging an alliance with the Jungle Kingdom and she travels with Mario to a royal audience with ruler Cranky Kong (Fred Armisen) and his son Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen).

The Super Mario Bros. Movie appeals unabashedly to die-hard fans, almost to its detriment by shoehorning so many characters into 92 breathless minutes, but Horvath and Jelenic’s picture doesn’t alienate newcomers to this topsy-turvy universe.

THE POPE’S EXORCIST (15, 103 mins)

Released: April 7 (UK & Ireland)

Oscar winner Russell Crowe leads the cast of director Julius Avery’s supernatural horror thriller based on the books An Exorcist Tells His Story and An Exorcist: More Stories penned by Father Gabriele Amorth, Chief Exorcist of the Vatican.

Written for the big screen by Michael Petroni and Evan Spiliotopoulos, The Pope’s Exorcist follows Amorth as he investigates cases at the behest of the pontiff (Franco Nero).

The Pope asks Amorth to focus his attention on a young boy called Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney), who has supposedly been possessed by a demon.

Local priest Father Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto) is woefully unprepared to tackle this ancient evil so Amorth lends his years of experience and he inadvertently uncovers a far-reaching conspiracy that the Vatican has attempted to keep secret for centuries.

GODLAND (12A, 143 mins)

Released: April 7 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

Writer-director Hlynur Palmason follows up his slow-burning 2019 thriller A White, White Day with a visually arresting drama set in 19th-century Iceland.

The Church of Denmark assigns Lutheran priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) to a remote flock in Iceland and the holy man elects to take an arduous cross-country route to his new position.

Lucas draws inspiration from the rugged beauty of his surroundings to share teachings with his parish.